"Elie Wiesel and the Big Lie"

Andrew Winkler: I’m a baby boomer, born in Australia, grown up in France and Germany. I am hence fluent in English, French and German, and also speak a bit of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Foreign languages, history and culture have always been a passion of mine. Both sides of my family are from Central Europe, with a mixed ethnic background: German, Austrian, Czech, Polish. Before, during and after WW2, they experienced racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing from both sides of the conflict. My wife is a ‘mongrel’ too: Malay, Chinese, Portuguese and British. My background is that of a postgraduate in computer science and business administration, including an MBA with one of the world’s leading business schools. I gave up a successful career as an IT executive to follow my vocation as a dissident activist.

Robert Linsday: I like to think that I inspired the name of the site Ziopedia. My article "Wikipedia, Ziopedia or Judeopedia" came out a few weeks before Ziopedia went online. I've always suspected that my article inspired the title? Did it, or am I just being narcissistic?

Andrew Winkler: (laughs) To some extent, for sure. I first came up with the idea of calling the site Zioclopedia, even registered a domain name for it. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I then stumbled across your article and changed the name to ZioPedia.

Robert Lindsay: Do you know who Eric Hunt is? What is your opinion about his post? Why did you accept it? When you accepted it, did you realize you were publishing a criminal's confession and description of his crime?

Andrew Winkler: I wouldn’t have a clue. When I first saw the article submission, I couldn’t stop laughing, because I thought it was a spoof written by some witty revisionist. When the massive and concerted media reporting hit us, I realised that it was more likely a Zionist plant, designed to discredit the revisionist community.

Robert Lindsay: Have the police questioned you or asked to see Internet logs in any investigation of this case? Have police threatened to charge you with any sort of crime re: this case in any way? Have any authorities threatened to shut down your site as a result of this case?

Andrew Winkler: The police hasn’t approached me and quite frankly I don’t think they will. They haven’t even spoken to Elie Wiesel himself. One of the many fishy things about this story is that he hasn’t jumped at the opportunity to talk to the media about it, which is totally out of character.

Robert Lindsay: What is your opinion of "Eric Hunt" and the views he expressed in his piece?

Andrew Winkler: It’s a well known fact in the dissident community, both on the left and the right of the political spectrum, that Elie Wiesel’s supposedly non-fictional autobiography is in fact mostly fictional. For example he goes on and on in his book “Night” how the Nazis slowly burned their victims to death in crematories, when all the other 'witnesses' claim they were killed in gas chambers, not exactly a minor detail. But such is the power of the mainstream media, that hardly anybody outside of the dissident scene knows anything about it.

Robert Lindsay: What is your opinion of the incident itself? Do you think a crime was committed? Do you think Mr. Hunt is a stalker? Do you think Hunt merely wanted to interview Wiesel, or that he had darker intentions? Do you think he assaulted Wiesel or merely accosted him? Do you regard Hunt's actions as appropriate and reasonable or bizarre and creepy?

Andrew Winkler: Coercing someone to a confession is a crime, regardless of the motives and whether it’s done by the Bush government or a Holocaust revisionist.

Robert Lindsay: What is your opinion of Wiesel and his works? Do you think he is a representative of Norman Finkelstein's Holocaust Industry? What do you think of Wiesel attending a conference on conflict resolution?

Andrew Winkler: Finkelstein, one of the most outspoken critics of the ‘Holocaust industry’, calls Wiesel a clown. In my opinion, that’s one of the nicer ways of putting it. In my opinion he is a fraud. He has done an incredible amount of harm to the Palestinian and the German people.

Robert Lindsay: What do you think of the way that this incident is being portrayed in the media? Do you regard it as a tempest in a teapot? Many Jews, judging from reactions on the blogs and the Jewish and Israeli press, responded to this incident with panicked reactions that "the Nazis are coming back", "Nazism is right around the corner" and "now we need Israel more than ever". Do you think these Jewish reactions are reasonable or examples of paranoia and victim addiction? Do you think that Organized Jewry works overtime to keep the Jews in a state of "pogrom panic" to prevent assimilation of the Jews and support Zionism?

Andrew Winkler: The media thrive on stories like that. Don’t forget that most of Western media are owned and controlled by Jews who are blind supporters of the racist Zionist entity. They need stories about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism as a means of controlling Western public opinion.

Robert Lindsay: Many Internet sites and some papers called Ziopedia an anti-Semitic site, a hate site, etc. How do you respond to such charges. Our own position is that there is maybe 20% anti-Semitic content on there but the rest cannot be characterized that way, and some of it is even overtly Zionist. You say you oppose trailer trash racism? What is that? White Supremacism and neo-Nazism? The notion that Jews are genetically and racially corrupt? If so, why do you run articles by such folks on your site, for instance, apparently Mr. Hunt?

Andrew Winkler: In the olden days, an anti-Semite was someone who hates Jews. These days it’s someone the Jews hate. All you need to do is criticise Israel or the Israel lobby and a lot of people call you an anti-Semite. Some of that is deliberate, politically motivated libel, some Skinner box like reflexes due to 60 years of Zionist brainwashing. Personally, I hate nothing more than bullies and racists. They push my buttons. That’s exactly why I’m so opposed to the Zionist entity. Most of the articles written on the ZioPedia site are written by Jews, some in favour, some opposed to Apartheid Israel. Every article that comes in is treated equally. As long as it is somewhat related to the topic of Zionism and - by my standards - isn't racist, I'll post it. I consider racism to be the discrimination against someone solely because of his or her race. I don't consider saying anything critical about Jews or Israel as a form of racism, unless the criticism is based on racial grounds.

Robert Lindsay: What's your position on Israel? Do you want to dissolve it? Do all the Jews have to leave or can they stay and live with Arabs?

Andrew Winkler: I consider Israel to be the most racist and violent political entity on the planet, far worse for example than South Africa before the end of Apartheid. It is an embarrassment to mankind and must be a replaced with a free, united and egalitarian Palestine. At the end of the day, it’s up to the Palestinians to decide whether they can live next door to their tormenters of 60 years. I couldn’t.

Robert Lindsay: You have been called a German nationalist. Is that an accurate portrayal? How is German nationalism different from other forms of nationalism such as Zionism?

Andrew Winkler: Taking pride in your nationality, your ethnic background, and your heritage is healthy, no different from taking pride in your appearance, as long as it doesn’t lead to supremacism and discrimination against others. I feel strong empathy for the German people, as I do for the Palestinians, because of the bad treatment they have received for decades. Given the fact that I’m born in Australia and have lived here most of my adult life, I consider myself first and foremost Australian.

Robert Lindsay: How many visitors a day do you get? A week? A month? How many death threats and hate mails do you get? Are they mostly or all from Jews? Are you willing to discuss financial matters? Advertising income? Donations income?

Andrew Winkler: ZioPedia.org became very popular already in the second month of her existence. That was mainly due to a Howard Schultz spoof letter I wrote, drawing attention to the little known fact that the Starbucks chairman supports Apartheid Israel’s propaganda efforts with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That letter, named “A Thankyou to all Starbucks customers”, got read by more than 100,000 readers on the ZioPedia site alone in the first month of its publication, and was republished on hundreds of other sites all over the world. From then on we kept growing, with over hundred of thousand of new readers each month discovering our site. These days, I measure our performance not so much in how many people are visiting our site each month, but how much hate mail and how many death threats we receive each week. Less than 3 is poor, 3 to 9 medium, and 10 or more excellent. Most of the writers don’t elaborate whether they are Jewish or not. Of those who do, about half are Jewish. Most of our income is from one-off donations from our readers, Given the fact that we had to go through 3 server upgrades so far in the 9 months of our existence, we rarely break even. But then again, ZioPedia is not about making money. It’s about fighting evil.

Robert Lindsay: Who works on the site? Just you? Anyone else?

Andrew Winkler: I am the only full time person working on the site. Apart from that, there are dozens of part-time volunteers from all over the world helping me – an hour here and there - with editing and publishing.

Robert Lindsay: Is there now a campaign to shut you down? Why did Google pull its Google ads off your site? Did you violate some policy of theirs? Is it true that Paypal is threatening to cancel your site for a disingenuous reason? Are you aware that they shut down Joe Vialls conspiracy site for similar reasons? Who is behind this campaign, do you have any idea?

Andrew Winkler: There is definitely something going on. Most likely, the ADL or CAMERA have someone on our case. We have increasing problems with hackers, denial of service attacks and viruses. Numerous Internet security software vendors have blacklisted us under categories such as hate, violence, racism and political extremism, with the result that more and more of our readers have difficulties visiting our site from work or public libraries. And yes, Google ads have been disabled for our site, without notice, and we have been advised that PayPal is considering to disable our online payment account.

Robert Lindsay: Have any of the Jews who send you hate mails and death threats gone to the next level. Have you received such calls at home? Some say that they are following you and watching you? Do you have any evidence that these folks are watching you? Have any of them ever accosted you in person in any way?

Andrew Winkler: I refuse to let those threats get to me. I am very passionate about my work and prepared to pay any price for it, and I mean any.

Robert Lindsay is an independent left journalist from California.
www.ziopedia.org/content/view/3301/58/

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Last updated 24/07/2007

Homepage